Lost apple

Every fall, Shacksbury forages for the feral, wild or otherwise forgotten fruit of rural Vermont. Along narrow country roads and in overgrown old orchards, we find apples that have the tannins and flavors - rare in most commercially grown fruit - to ferment into full-bodied, dry, and food-friendly hard cider.

These forgotten apple trees are decades, and sometimes centuries, old. Their fruit is incredibly diverse. When we harvest from these trees, we're tapping into the long and deep tradition of cider making in New England. By grafting our favorite found varieties into a small commercial orchard, we're protecting that tradition for years to come.

Along the way, we make some delicious limited release ciders out of foraged fruit. Our current offerings are listed below.

2016 lost and found (200 cases)

Though our 2016 wild harvest yield was relatively small, our foraged fruit had a high concentration of tannins — making this cider one of the most complex we've produced.

The name, "Deer Snacks," is an homage to many Vermonters' feelings about wild apples. The gnarled fruit that we find while foraging has, for decades, been chalked up as food for wildlife, ill suited for human consumption. We know better...

2016 Pét Nat (160 cases) - Sold out - 2017 coming soon!

First America-made pétillant naturel cider

Methode ancestrale, or pétillant naturel, is a traditional winemaking process of carbonation, where the cider finishes its primary fermentation in the bottle, capturing the tail-end of the carbon dioxide created during fermentation